In a podcast I listened to this week, it was revealed that Q.U.B.E. (the recently released first person puzzle game that borrows liberally from the Portal aesthetic) left out any trace of narrative simply because the accents of the voice actors were Welsh and not the typical British-English that American gamers are more familiar with. This made me sad for a few reasons: firstly the narrative ambiguity of the game is an interesting direction but to be forced to remove a complete element from a game simply because it might “confuse” a certain set of players is lame, secondly there are a bunch of games with weird accents where the varied tone and dialogue help add a certain flavor that is missing in most other US releases.

One of my favorites over the years has to be your lovable sidekick in Dragon Quest VIII, Yangus.